Random Thoughts January 2026

Ted Reads Random Thoughts

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I was thinking how much my language has been derived from farming.  Terms such as “Living high on the hog,” “A cut above,” “Walking in tall cotton,” All hat; no cattle.” Thank you Farmers.  I grew up with the family farm being the hub of our clan’s wheel.  I once asked my grandfather if after I graduated from High School, if I could come work on the farm (as my career.) 

As I remember, he said “No” with a few expletives about my even asking.  I imagine his response was a lot about who he thought I was, and about my capabilities.  I’m guessing he was also commenting on how difficult a life I would have trying to make it as a farmer, because making it as a farmer was and is still such a difficult thing.  

A friend mentioned she was on the path to the holy, and that she believed there were many ways.  That got me to thinking as to whether or not a path to the holy might not just circle back to oneself.  As in, perhaps the holy we seek from other people, places and things is actually already present in us.  That’s what all of the religions I know about, suggest (roughly estimated to be between 4,000 and 40,000; 10,000 Christian versions alone).  As a footnote, at the end of the day, as currently practiced, all religions give their followers permission to kill other people, given the right conditions.  Does that seem odd to anyone other than me?    

Science is about the most objective source of information I know of.  Research.  Published, peer reviewed research. That’s why my half-dozen “Google Alerts” that come to me daily (which scan the scientific papers just being published) are such an important source of information for me.  And even that is infused with the scientist’s and culture’s biases (especially when the research is about human beings).  “News” from any other source is primarily BS.  Especially these days. 

Speaking of which, Johns Hopkins just published a study that suggests that smelling our own farts is a way to avoid dementia.  I wonder if smelling someone else’s has the same effect? 

If it is, should we begin saying “Thank you” instead of “Gross!!!”  Gather round the person and lean in, when someone else delivers a ‘parting of the air’? Pay, as we do athletes, for those of us who are really good at it?  Have special diets that would produce gas so that we might be able to enhance the chance we could keep our marbles. Old people who can’t help but fart with each step be honored and revered and given a special status.  As you can see this raises all kinds of new questions. 

Which leads me to wonder if cats fart.  Dogs I know do and get blamed a lot for ones that aren’t theirs.  Maybe it is their way of self-treatment preventing dementia?  They seem surprised when it happens.  I have observed them turning towards the orifice and sniffing as if something important just happened.  I wonder if that is why they are called in some quarters man’s best friend?  Does it work when we smell a dog’s farts? 

POLITICAL CONTENT TO FOLLOW

Instead of vaccines causing the explosion of autism and other ailments that they are reported to cause (without any actual science to back up the opinion) I am wondering if we might be better off looking at the effect of plastics that now are a part of every human being on this planet. 

A part of EVERY organ in the human body.  With the dosages beginning to be delivered to the fetus from the very beginning of its existence.  Research suggests that we take in about a credit card’s worth of plastic every week.  And how about the effect of the “Forever Chemicals” that are also a part of every human being on earth.  I don’t have much doubt.  I wish I had the money to support that kind of research.  It is not going to happen during this current regime, and I doubt that the oil and chemical companies would be very excited about that research happening.  The 21^st century’s version of tobacco not being a problem.   

A good way to understand the more accurate version of American history, would be to watch the American revolution series on PBS.  I taught American History and didn’t know this stuff.  I didn’t know that the American Revolution was as much of a civil war between the “Loyalists” and the “Rebels” (with a concurrent war of annihilation of the indigenous peoples) as it was a war against Great Britain. 

Why didn’t I know this?  Because the content of textbooks are written to what is acceptable to every state’s education, social tolerances, and political expediency.

The publishers cannot afford to write a different book for each state, so they write them to pass each state’s version of American History.  A remarkably diluted recollection of what happened.  That’s how it was.   When I was teaching, it was what Texas thought was “OK” to expose youngins to.  The Texas version of American History.   That’s still how it is.  What is acceptable to the most conservative of states is what is taught as the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.     

Diluted to the point where there is no reference to anything that any particular state, who the company wants to adopt their textbook, would object to.  The result being that any textbook on the history of the US is an agreed upon, heavily edited, significantly redacted version of what actually happened. 

There were “Teachers Editions” where one might hope that “the rest of the story” might be told, but that didn’t and doesn’t happen.

I became a better history teacher when I began reading primary sources for a particular period of time.  What are primary sources?  Letters back from soldiers, from settlers, from clergy. Transcripts of speeches, court cases, newspaper reports.  Ken Burn’s “American Revolution” was filled with such primary sources.   

That is also when I started getting into trouble teaching from them.  At the time I was teaching in a county that was the regional headquarters for the KKK, with members who from time to time would join community marches on holidays, blow up school buses and the like.

I can guarantee you that there is a schoolteacher who assigned their students to watch the Ken Burns “American Revolution” and has gotten themselves into trouble.  I would guess that many other American History teachers knew that would be the case, ahead of time, knew they didn’t dare, if they valued their jobs, and didn’t.  Still others, who didn’t recommend it because it doesn’t fit their version of America’s history.  We blame other countries for the very same brainwashing acts, as if we are innocent.